


Steve VS...

by girlbookwrm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Back rubs, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Food, Food Issues, Found Family, Gen, Happy Steve Bingo 2018, Hidden Magical Powers, Log Cabins & Camping Trips, M A X I M U M F L U F F, basically Steve discovers that future food is delicious and goes hogwild and nothing bad happens, but only if you look sideways and squint, fluff intensifies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-07-07 00:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15897264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlbookwrm/pseuds/girlbookwrm
Summary: Very Wholesome Stories about Steve Rogers Having Only Good Days.Featuring: Tony is Not the Weed Cousin; Steve is a Human Threshing Machine; One (1) Bald Eagle; Steve has the Purloined Letter of Magical Powers; and Whatever the Exact Opposite of Touch-Starved Is.





	1. Found Family

**Author's Note:**

> a nonnie practically dared me to do this. so here we are, filling prompts for the happy steve bingo

#  **Steve VS Ohana**

### AKA Wine Mom, Vodka Aunt, Beer Uncle, Scotch Grandpa, Gin Grandma, and Dad

 

“I’m the weed cousin!” Tony protests loudly. “I’m _clearly_ the weed cousin.”

“You’re not the weed cousin,” Rhodey says with the kind of bottomless world-weary exhaustion that comes from dealing with Tony 24/7. The poor man is drinking scotch at 11 am. That should probably be printed on Tony’s forehead like a warning. _Side effects may include drinking scotch at 11 am._

“Um? Excuse me? Have any of you even _smoked_ weed? I don’t think so.” Tony points at Rhodes. “Chronic Rule Follower.” He points at Sam. “Goody Two Shoes.” Sam looks outraged, but only only manages to splutter in protest before Tony moves on to Natasha. “Too Paranoid to Let Loose.” Natasha just makes a face and nods like _well when he’s right, he’s right._ “Grandpa there goes without saying,” Tony adds without even pointing to Steve. “Therefore…” He points at himself. “Weed Cousin.”

“I have,” Steve says, without looking up from his newspaper. He doesn’t feel right reading the news on his phone or his tablet. “Smoked reefer,” he adds, to clarify. “I have.”

The table has gone silent. He flicks down the top of his paper to look. Eggs slide off Tony’s fork and fall to his plate with a quiet _plep._ Down at the other end of the table, Sam is hiding a laugh in his mimosa.

Steve rolls his eyes and flicks the top of his newspaper back up. “It was in my asthma cigarettes. Along with _deadly nightshade.”_

Rhodey chokes on his scotch. “Y-you’re _shitting_ me.”

Steve shakes his head. “Nnnnope. Gave me heart palpitations. Made me see things. Had to switch brands after that. Was gonna finish out the pack anyway -- it’s a waste otherwise, you know? But Bucky threw them in the river.”

“How did you ever make it to the future?” Sam marvels at the air.

“Well, when the Winter Soldier wants you to die, you die,” Steve says mildly. “But if the Winter Soldier wants you to live, you definitely live.”

“Or else,” Natasha supplies. She and Sam clink glasses. She has been drinking a screwdriver, but Steve’s pretty sure it’s just vodka now.

Joking about the Winter Soldier is a new addition to his repertoire, but Bucky’s alive, and every once in a while he sends Steve a postcard to let him know that he’s fine, he just needs a little time. Steve’s made his peace with that. He thinks fondly of the day when Bucky might want to join them for stuff like this, but in the meanwhile, he’s not alone anymore. He’s got the Avengers.

Avengers Boozy Brunch is a thing that they do on days after something truly obnoxious has happened. Not traumatic or disastrous or catastrophic, just… _obnoxious._ Yesterday, the Avengers were called out in force to deal with what turned out to be an off-course weather balloon. They spent the next four hours in paperwork hell and didn't get back to the tower until 4 am. An immediate Avengers Boozy Brunch was declared for the following morning.

The whole point of Avengers Boozy Brunch is that if they’ve had booze, then they can’t be on call. No one can bother them until they’ve sobered up, and the weather balloon fiasco was a real hassle and everyone is just fucking tired, okay? When you work a job like this, you need to unwind sometimes.

Clint, Vision and Wanda drew the short straws, so they’re on call in case aliens invade or whatever. Wanda isn’t legal to drink, and Vision doesn’t even drink water, so really it’s _Clint_ who drew the short straw.

 _“Any_ way,” Tony says. “Look. It’s process of elimination. We all know who the vodka aunt is, that’s easy,” Tony says.

Natasha is on her phone now, and raises her glass in a silent toast.

“Wine mom, also easy.”

Steve frowns and looks up from his paper again. “Pepper?” He says. They need more women on the team, he thinks, not for the first time.

 _“No,”_ say Tony and Sam in unison.

“It’s clearly me,” Sam says, and Tony points in enthusiastic agreement.

Steve narrows his eyes.

“You don’t follow him on twitter,” Rhodes says, like that explains everything.

Steve just gives him a puzzled look.

“He’s the master of the classy call-out tweet. Also he’s a meme,” Rhodes adds.

The puzzled look intensifies.

His phone pings. He sets down the paper and digs it out. There’s a message from Natasha. It’s a picture of Sam, clearly taken by a paparazzi photographer. He’s only visible in profile, but his expression is extremely judgemental, and there’s a glass of red wine at his lips. He looks very handsome and also Better Than You. Large white font across the bottom reads BUT THAT’S NONE OF MY BUSINESS.

“Wine Mom,” Sam sing-songs, lifting his mimosa.

“Then what am I?” Steve starts.

“Forgive the interruption,” FRIDAY says. “But we’ve got a call incoming from Hawkeye.”

“Yeah, put him up,” Steve says. They all turn to look as Hawkeye’s face projects in mid-air off to one side.

Clint lifts a finger. “First of all: I want you all to know that I hate you and you’re the worst.”

“You got an Avengers Assemble?” Steve prompts.

Clint sighs. “Yeah, looks like some AIM activity near the border. Should be a milk run, but I still hate all of you and I know where you live.”

Rhodey points at Clint with the little straw from his drink. “Weed Cousin?" he suggests.

“Please, I’m clearly the Beer Dad,” Clint says without batting an eye.

“Beer _Uncle,”_ Natasha corrects, a little scolding.

Clint looks off-screen. “Yeah, maybe. Looks like the niblings are gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes. I’m gonna go make sure they don’t do something weird.” His face vanishes.

“What,” Steve asks serenely, “the _hell_ is a nibling?”

“Gender-neutral alternative to niece or nephew. Does Vision actually have a gender?” Natasha muses.

“Tried out female pronouns for a month, but decided it wasn’t working,” Tony says conversationally. “He’s opted for male pronouns for the time being. Are we seriously saying that Steve is the Weed Cousin by process of elimination? I still think I’m the Weed Cousin.”

“You can't be the weed cousin, you're older than Steve,” Natasha says.

“Um?” Tony looks comically offended. “He is literally old enough to be my dad.” Then he makes a face like he’s just grossed himself out. “Urgh. Brain bleach. I need brain bleach.”

“I’m really not,” Steve says. “I was 26 when I went under. That was three years ago. I’m turning thirty this year.”

Tony looks shellshocked. He looks horrified. “Oh God,” he says. He looks down at his gin and tonic. _“Oh my God.”_ He looks up at Rhodes. “I’m the gin grandma,” he whispers.

“It’s okay, honey,” Rhodes says absently. He’s turned his attention back to his omelette. Tony puts his head in his hands.

“That still doesn’t answer what I am,” Steve says, picking up the newspaper once more.

“You’re dad,” says everyone at the table except Tony.

Steve has to hide his smile behind the paper. It’s far too dopey to be allowed at Avengers Boozy Brunch. There are no Mushy Drunks allowed at Boozy Brunch, and that’s a distinctly Mushy feeling blooming in Steve’s chest.

“Teetotaler Dad?” Sam muses. “Orange Juice Dad? Is that a thing?”

“This is passionfruit juice,” Steve says. “Because _someone_ keeps drinking the orange juice from the carton.”

“Pain-in-the-Ass Dad,” Sam decides. “And I will not apologize for that. Drinking from the carton is the only way I know of to ensure that no one takes supersoldier portions outta _my goddamn orange juice.”_

Steve takes a pointed sip from his passionfruit juice and decides not to tell them that he’s got two fingers of Asgardian Mead mixed in there.

“Wait!” Tony's head pops up. “What does that make Thor? Oh my god. Is  _Thor_ the weed cousin??”

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Food

#  **Steve VS Portion Control**

### AKA Supersoldiers and Hobbits have One Thing in Common

 

It starts with shawarma.

Steve is sitting there with his chin propped on his fist, staring at the frankly unappetizing mess of chicken and sauce and thinking fondly of the days when he could get away with eating tiny portions because they matched his tiny frame.

“If you’re not gonna eat that, I’ll take it,” Tony says, pointing across the table to Cap’s food.

This kickstarts some Depression Era knee-jerk reaction. Steve hunches over his meal like the meanest puppy at the pound. He's glaring like Stark just insulted his mother.  And then, he scoops up the flatbread and forces an absolutely _massive_ bite of shawarma into his face. It would be intimidating, maybe, except that his cheeks are full like a serum-enhanced chipmunk.

And then his taste buds deliver their report to his brain.

Steve’s eyes go wide, round as saucers. Meat flavor, and spices he can’t name, some kind of sauce that’s a little sour, but not sour like lemons or bad milk. And the flatbread is…

“Holy _cow,”_ Steve garbles around his mouthful.

And then the rest of the Avengers watch in vague horror as Captain America descends upon his shawarma like an entire school of patriotic piranha. Nat leans back a little, like she’s scared of getting accidentally inhaled along with the chicken, and possibly the little red basket it came in. Thor claps Steve on the shoulder, as though congratulating him on his appetite. People maybe try to speak to him, but Steve tunes them out.

When Steve can finally look up from his meal (it takes all his tactical brain to ensure that every last drop of sauce gets into his mouth) everyone is staring.

Steve swallows and wipes his lips. “What?” he says, a little self-conscious now.

“Nothing,” Tony says. “Nothing!”

“It was like you’d been possessed by the spirit of a threshing machine,” Clint says, sounding more than a little awed.

 

* * *

 

Here’s the thing: Steve grew up in the Great Depression, as everyone knows. He had ulcers and anemia, which fewer people know, but isn’t exactly _un_ common knowledge. Very few people then go on to make the connection that he joined the army shortly _before_ he acquired his new, fully functional stomach and fresh set of taste buds. Virtually no one really understands that between his metabolic needs, army rations, and the general scarcity of sustenance, he basically ate everything that was handed to him, and only 80% of it was technically food.

The future has food. The future has _lots_ of food. At first, Steve thinks it can’t all be as good as the shawarma. But it _is._

_Everything is delicious._

The pizza is amazing. They put _pineapple_ on it. He knows that people call that an abomination, but the bursts of tangy-sweet in contrast with the sauce and cheese and ham—it's so _novel_ to him _._ He's never even _had_ pineapple before.

The street food is _incredible,_ and if he paces his lunchbreak correctly, he can finish his hot dog with sauerkraut before he gets to the kebab place and then finish the kebab in time to pick up a bialy and finish that before he gets back to the Tower. Sometimes the team has lunch together after or before that.

Steve's never been this food-secure in his life. He realizes one day that he can't remember the last time he was hungry— _really_ hungry, the way he used to be all the time. It's a simple thing, but God it makes him so _happy._

He thinks there should be downsides, physically, but it seems like the serum can pretty much handle anything he throws at it, whether that's a bullet or a bunch of raw fish wrapped in seaweed. (Sushi is a little weird for him at first, but turns out to be just as delicious as everything else.) He feels more alert. He’s pretty sure he’s gotten stronger. He can definitely run farther when he’s had three breakfasts instead of just the one.

The only downside is that buying every meal at a different restaurant gets a little expensive. But after a few adventures in cooking, he decides that replacing the stove every three days is going to be  _way_ more expensive than ordering in. Anyway, Steve has _lots_ of backpay. He knows that the sensible choice would be to invest, or put it in a savings account, or buy real estate, or…

But he spends an awful lot of it on takeout.

He regularly picks up dinner for the team. There's always at least four portions just for him.

“You’re going to get fat,” Tony hypothesizes, watching in horror as Steve tucks into his third helping of KFC.

“I'm sure gonna try,” Steve says, picking the last scraps of meat off yet another piece of fried chicken.

 

* * *

 

“Man I don’t get it,” Sam says, watching in horror as Steve wipes his streaming eyes and guzzles milk straight from the carton like an animal. Getting his drunken noodles Thai Hot had been a mistake. “I’ve seen your apartment. You live like a damn monk. I thought you were all morally opposed to the idea of capitalist excess.”

Steve takes another swig of milk and pulls a face at Sam. “Really?”

“I dunno, man. You stopped in the middle of an international manhunt to pick up a free table from the side of the road. Seemed like a statement.”

“Oh I get it. You say ‘morally opposed to the idea of capitalist excess,’ but you mean ‘cheap,’ right?”

“I was trying to be nice about it, but yeah. Still, man…” Sam waves at the three containers of Thai food dominating the table across from Sam’s salad. “This seems… extreme.”

Steve sets aside the drunken noodles and reaches for the Pad Thai instead. “My therapist keeps telling me to do what makes me happy,” he says, digging in with a plastic fork.

“I am not your therapist!”

“No, but you two got similar kinds of ideas about what I should do.” Steve shovels the forkful into his mouth. Sweet, but well balanced with salty, meaty, and some spice that’s warm on his tongue. Steve closes his eyes and savors it.

“Food makes you happy?”

Steve opens his eyes and sees Sam staring at him, with that oddly soft look that means Steve has done something really cute, but also a little sad. It’s the kind of look people have watching videos of rescue dogs wagging their tails for the first time.

Steve finishes chewing and swallows. “Food makes me happy.”

“You got a real Dickens Orphan thing going on, don’t you.”

Steve shrugs and reaches for the Pad See-Ew.

 

* * *

 

“Buck, you gotta try this,” Steve says, shoving the coppery dish across the table.

Natasha doesn’t bat an eye. She's seen this particular dog and pony show before. But Wanda watches in wide-eyed alarm as Bucky scoops out a massive portion of Wakandan curry, folds it up in flatbread like he’s eating pizza New York style, and shoves the entire mess into his mouth. He can barely chew. Yellowish sauce drips over his chin. Wanda’s not convinced that he won’t unhinge his jaw like a snake, if push comes to shove.

The moan he lets out is muffled, but definitely leaning towards orgasmic.

“Right?” Steve says excitedly. He looks entirely too happy to have someone else at the table as disgusting as he is about food.

Bucky swallows his ‘mouthful’ with some difficulty. “Holy shit, Steve.”

 _“Right?”_ Steve flags down the server. Wanda is vaguely embarrassed. This is a _Royal Banquet,_ and she’s apparently sharing her table with two ravening wolves thinly disguised as human beings. “Yeah, can we get, like, eight more bowls of this?” Steve says, pointing to the dish that Bucky’s still savaging.

He’s mopping the sauce up with more flatbread, but some of it ends up on his hands. And great, now he’s licking his fingers in a way that’s frankly obscene.

“Of course,” the server says. To his credit, he doesn’t even bat an eye, just goes to get more food for the wildlife.

“Are they always like this?” Wanda asks.

Nat nods, and sips the weird yogurt-drink that comes with the curry.

Now _Steve_ is licking sauce off of Bucky’s fingers. They _both_ let out little happy moans.

“You know what?” Wanda declares. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Log Cabins and Camping Trips

#  **Steve VS the Eagle**

### AKA this is why Ben Franklin wanted to make our national bird the turkey

 

Steve stumbles out of the cabin, clutching coffee in his hands and blinking in bleary confusion at the scenery. Bucky had dragged him here after things went south in Anchorage. Safe house, he’d said. On the edge of Chugach National Forest. Barely a house. This coffee had been made on a stove that probably predates Steve.

He’d been pretty concussed last night, but… he’s pretty sure that there had been water out there. The cabin was sheltered on three sides by trees, and they’d had to hike through thick woods to get here, but the little lawn out front had gone down to the water. He was sure. There had been moonlight, and lapping waves. Romantic, he’d thought, and said so, and Bucky had smacked him. 

But it _had_ been pretty romantic.

It’s less romantic now. The water is gone. Just  _ gone. _ All that’s left is a smear of puddled mud flat going out hundreds of feet. Steve rubs his eyes. 

Tides, his brain supplies, very belatedly. The tide must be out. 

He sits on the steps of the cabin. He pulls out his phone. He has a single bar of signal, which is just enough to get texts.

_ U ok? _ says a text from Sam.

_ Still alive, _ he texts back. 

Three sips of coffee later, the bouncing dots appear.  _ U guys got away clean? _

_ Yeah. Staying in an honest to god log cabin, but Bucky’s cleared it. Must be safe. _

The next text from Sam is just a series of stars, fireworks, American flags, and little cartoon Abe Lincolns.

Steve snorts and looks up.

There’s an eagle on the mud flat.

_ A bald fucking eagle. _

It’s sitting on the flat, kind of… rocking, strangely. Head moving up and down, whole body shifting in an odd jerky way.

Steve stares for long minutes before he understands what he’s seeing. The eagle is eating a dead fish that got stranded up here when the tide went out. It’s ripping off thick chunks of stinking fish flesh, throwing his head back, swallowing them whole. It’s… really gross, actually. 

The eagle sees him.

It freezes.

Steve stares at the eagle, and the eagle stares back, with exactly the expression of a man who has been caught drinking pickle juice out of the fridge at three in the morning. Slowly, without taking its eyes off of Steve, the eagle goes back to snarfing down the aquatic equivalent of roadkill.

“Majestic.”

Steve is not even slightly surprised to find that Bucky is  _ literally right behind him Jesus. _ He huffs, and a moment later, there’s a creak and Bucky’s knees appear, one on either side of Steve. He snugs up against Steve’s back. Steve leans into him and Bucky’s arms come around his waist. 

“The glory of nature,” Steve says. “That’s what camping is all about, right?”

The eagle looks like it might be choking on a fishbone now.

Bucky makes an affronted noise in Steve’s ear. “We’re not  _ camping. _ We have a  _ house.” _

“We have a  _ cabin. _ It’s a glorified  _ tent,  _ Buck.”

“The 21st century has made you soft,” Bucky scolds. 

“The 21st century has forgotten that I was born and raised in the rugged wilderness of Flatbush Avenue,” Steve complains. “I’ve never even  _ seen _ an eagle before.”

Out on the mud flat, the eagle horks up a glob of probably half-rotten fish detritus.

“O beautiful for spacious skies,” Bucky croons. “For amber waves of grain.”

Steve starts laughing.

The eagle, startled, gives an undignified hop, followed by an even more undignified waddle of increasing speed. 

“For purple mountain majesties,” Bucky sings, his voice low and melodious in Steve’s ear. Steve laughs louder, his whole face crinkling up in mirth as the eagle manages to heave itself into the air. With its white tail and head, it looks like nothing so much as an airborne two-by-four. “Above the fruited plain!”

Steve laughs and laughs and laughs.

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Hidden Magical Powers

#  **Steve VS the Shield**

### AKA Your Ancestors Called it Magic, and So Do We

 

It can get a little slow between missions, is all.

“What if... I threw it on the ground and then you hit it on the rebound?” Steve suggests, squinting into the middle distance like he’s trying to imagine how that would work, exactly.

“How would you get it back?” Tony asks over the comms.

Thor frowns, ignoring the interruption and twirling his hammer contemplatively. “Like your… based ball?” he says.

Steve grimaces at the name, like maybe it physically pains him to have a Great American Pastime misunderstood like that. “Well…” he visibly gives up. “Yeah, kinda.”

“But _how_ will you get the shield _back_ into your _hand?”_ Tony asks, a little louder this time.

Neither of the blond geriatric wunderkind react to the interruption. They’re both nodding thoughtfully, clearly pleased with the whole idea.

“It’s worth a try, surely. We could add some lightning to the mix,” Thor says, enthusiastically.

Thor thinks every mix could use more lightning.

“Sure!” Steve agrees. 

“But how—!” Tony sighs loudly, staticky in the comms. “Ugh nevermind. JARVIS, let’s chart the trajectories and the rebound.”

 

 

 

Steve and Thor spend the rest of team practice coming up with increasingly ridiculous ways to combine hammer and shield (and usually lightning too) to create devastation on a sometimes alarming scale.

But before long, it devolves into a game of glorified catch.

Steve is grinning, and his hair is dark with sweat. They’ve been at it for hours. The rest of the Avengers are just watching from the sidelines now. Steve winds up to throw the shield full tilt at Thor, who swings two handed and sends the thing arcing high into the air, sending sparks and lightning as it goes.

“FLY BALL!” Clint shouts. He has taken on the role of announcer with gusto. The shield glints and winks in the sun. Steve turns and runs, like he knows exactly where to go. The shield’s trajectory curves, down and slightly to the side. He has to jump and spin, but he catches it easily.

It slides into place on his arm.

Tony makes a sound of muffled rage from where he’s sitting with his StarkPad on his knees, making notes. The suit is long since abandoned.

The girls are all sitting together, sipping mint juleps as they watch the increasingly sweaty and musclebound display. Pepper is wearing a big hat and an outfit that could somehow glide effortlessly between boardroom and beach party. Jane is wearing a red tee-shirt that says _This Shirt Is Blue If You Run Fast Enough._  Darcy is wearing a tank top, and aiming a little handheld electric fan at her face. 

Natasha, who has stripped down to the athletic wear she wears under the sweltering super suit, tips her sunglasses down her nose and watches with lazy interest. Thor uses an underhand swing to send the shield rolling across the grass (“GROUND BALL!” Clint supplies) and Steve races after it like the world’s handsomest and happiest labrador.

In less than ten seconds, the shield is back on his arm, and flying back towards Thor. Steve bounces on his toes a little and waits for the next hit.

Tony makes a garbled noise in the back of his throat.

“Is Tony going to have an aneurism?” Jane asks.

“Probably not,” Pepper says serenely. She’s fanning herself with her StarkPad.  “Tony just finds vibranium... scientifically frustrating.”

“Mm,” Jane says, with deep sympathy. Out on the field, her scientifically frustrating boyfriend and his scientifically frustrating biceps are using his scientifically frustrating hammer to send the shield skimming across the grass fast enough to make clippings.

“LINE BALL!” Clint says, as Steve races alongside the shield. He does something that seems inadvisable with his toe to kick the shield up and — yep, back onto his arm.

“You know what thunderhunk would say,” Darcy says. She leans forward a little as Steve takes a break, jamming the shield down in the grass for a second so he can peel off his sweaty tee-shirt.

“No,” Natasha says, not taking her eyes off Steve’s back as he twists, winding up for another throw.

Darcy puts on an exaggerated Thor voice. “Your ancestors called it magic. You call it science. Where I come from, they are one in the same.”

“Oh that just isn’t fair!” Tony shouts, when Steve catches the shield _yet again._ “That shouldn’t be possible! There’s _no way—”_

“Yyyyeah,” Natasha says, watching the grin that Thor and Steve exchange across the field. “Science.”

“Magnets!” Tony bellows. He’s actually pulling his hair now. “I’m getting you magnets!”

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Back Rub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BINGO

#  **Steve VS Bucky('s Back)**

### AKA Ode to a Pair of Hands

 

Steven Grant Rogers has good hands.

Scratch that. 

Steven Grant Rogers has  _ great _ hands. Amazing hands. He's got a couple of fist-sized miracles attached to his arms, and that's the God’s Honest Truth.

Bucky knows this from personal experience. No, not  _ that _ kind of personal experience, come on. Steve gets the shakes like he’s sixteen as soon as anyone expresses the slightest interest in naked fun times. 

But here’s the thing:

The average human arm weighs about eight pounds. What with serum enhanced muscles and bones, Steve’s arms weigh maybe ten-twelve pounds each. Hard to say exactly.

Bucky’s one arm weighs fifty pounds. Maybe more. 

Bucky remembers, vividly, that back when Steve was 100 pounds of wheezy spite, he’d had a crooked spine. If it had bothered him, he never complained about it. Hard to say, in retrospect, whether it was his back or his asthma or something else that had made him scowl at any given point of any given day. Little Steve had scowled an awful lot.

Bucky scowls an awful lot too, these days. It’s not  _ just _ because of his back, but damn. The back thing sure doesn’t fucking help. 

So yeah. James Buchanan Barnes has a bad back. 

Scratch that. James Buchanan Barnes has a twelve-car pileup where most folks would have a spine.

It takes an embarrassingly long time for Steve to figure that out.

 

* * *

 

The first time Steve catches Bucky leaning back against the corner of a door frame he thinks that it’s just that it’s got a good vantage point. Clear sightlines to the doors and windows, and he can watch the TV. He looks a little antsy, shifting his weight. Eventually, he grunts and goes to join Steve on the couch. The second and third and fourth time, well… Lock a fella up for seventy years, he’s allowed to develop a couple of neuroses, right?

Anyway. 

Sometimes he comes home and finds Bucky starfished on the floor, glaring at the ceiling and squirming in slow motion, at least until Steve comes close enough for the glare to latch on him instead. Steve's still so delighted that Bucky's here that he doesn't question a single thing that Bucky does. Lying on the floor isn't even all that weird compared to the way all of Steve's lamps get disassembled to check for bugs every thirteen days.

But then, one day, Bucky sits up and Steve realizes that Bucky was lying on one (1) tennis ball and that is a little odd even by Winter Soldier Paranoia standards.

“Heya Buck. Uhhhhh.” Steve cocks his head. “Whatcha doin’ there, pal?”

“Nothing,” Bucky says. He takes the tennis ball in his metal fist and squeezes. And squeezes. And  _ squeezes. _ The lime green thing distorts under the pressure of his fingers, more and more, the green skin flexing between the metal digits. Then, with a bang like a shot going off that makes even Steve jump a little, it pops, bits of rubber and green fluff.

“Hydra sympathizer, was it?” Steve says drily.

_ “Useless _ is what it was,” Bucky complains.

Steve’s brow scrunches up. “Useless? For what? It’s a  _ tennis ball. _ ” He looks down at the bits of rubber and fluff caught in the plates of Bucky’s hand.

Bucky makes a face. It’s the  _ you’re gonna give me shit about this until the day I die _ face. He sucks in a breath through his nose and mumbles something so quickly that even Steve doesn’t hear it. 

“Sorry, what was that?” Steve asks. 

“The internet told me that it could help,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve squints. “With what?”

“My back.”

Steve squints harder. “How?”

Bucky sighs heavily. “It’s like a. Self-massage. Thing.”

Steve’s squint advances to the point that his eyes are actually closed. “Bucky.”

“My  _ back hurts,” _ Bucky says, with an expression like he’s admitting to some kind of horrible fetish. Steve doesn’t like to think about  _ how  much _ Bucky’s back must hurt for him to admit it like this, because the last time he got shot on a mission, no one found out until  _ seven hours later, _ when he got on the quinjet, sat down, grabbed a pair of tweezers, and calmly dug a bullet out of his side while everyone else watched in mute horror.

Steve opens his eyes and stares at Bucky, who looks uncomfortable and also mad about it. “So you’re using a tennis ball?”

“You put it under your back, and like, move around,” Bucky mumbles shamefacedly. “You can reach spots that--”

_ “I’m right here, Bucky. I have hands,”  _ Steve says, waving the aforementioned hands like he’s auditioning to be an air traffic controller.

Bucky stares at him. Blinks. “Oh.”

 

Three hours later (because Steve has to read through stuff about how to give a massage without, you know, breaking someone’s back with your supersoldier ham hands and Bucky has to meditate for three hours so he doesn’t freak out and break  _ Steve’s _ back with  _ his _ supersoldier ham hands) Bucky is lying face down on the bed, wearing soft pants and no shirt and breathing so steadily that he must be counting it out in his head. Meanwhile, Steve is wearing soft pants and a tee-shirt and approaching Bucky like he’s an active minefield.

“Should I--”

“Just go for it,” Bucky says, a little growly. “I’ll try not to stab you.”

Steve looks at Bucky’s bared back. He looks at the thin material of his pants, and the very obvious fact that he is not wearing anything under them and wonders where the hell the knife is. Because of course there is a knife. There is always a knife. 

Let it not be said that Steve Rogers shrinks from a challenge.  He rubs his supersoldier ham hands together and gets to it.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky is gone now. Goodbye cruel world, he has ascended from this plane to a higher level of existence. 

Steve’s hands find another knot and dig in.

Bucky makes a muffled sound, a creaky sort of groan not like the sound the tennis ball made just before it popped. 

_ It feels so good. _ Like. Sex is great and all, but if Bucky had to pick one thing to feel for the rest of his life, it would be this: Steve’s big warm ham hands on his back, carefully working around the attachment points of his arm, pressing steady and warm into the brick-like wall of  tension between Bucky’s shoulders, coaxing the muscles into ease. It’s a slow release of feel-good hormones into his system, an IV drip of happy, except instead of needles it’s  _ Steve. _

“Good?” Steve asks, doing something with his fingers on either side of Bucky’s spine.

“Ghhnugh,” Bucky says.

Something under his right shoulderblade comes unknotted with a near-audible click, and suddenly Bucky’s spine feels straight (possibly the only straight thing about him ha ha ha.)

“Hhhhrgh,” Bucky says.

Steve laughs. “Can I take that as a yes?”

Bucky lets out a teakettle sound into his pillow, then, with a near-inhuman effort, lolls his head around enough to look over his shoulder at Steve with one slitted eye. Sometime, Steve went from standing beside him to straddling his hips, and if Bucky were capable of being a human being instead of a half-dissolved puddle, he might have felt something inappropriate about the way Steve looms over and behind him. “Good,” he says, with tremendous effort.

Steve is smiling at Bucky -- a real one, not one of the ones he pulls out of his bag of Captain America tricks. It’s a  _ new _ smile. It’s not his “I’m about to be a little shit” smile. It’s not his “Bucky you’re such a little shit” smile. It’s not his sharp-toothed troublemaking smile, or even his bittersweet “remember when” smile. It’s not quite the blazingly happy smile that sometimes comes out of nowhere. That smile is like getting blindsided by a summer’s day, and prior to this second, he would have called it his favorite. But this smile is like a slow dawn; soft and rosy and gentle. It’s breathtaking.

Bucky has to clear his throat. “Come on. You can’t possibly be getting anything outta this.”

Steve ducks his head.  _ No honey, don’t hide like that, come on, _ Bucky thinks. Steve looks up, smiling with half his mouth, still radiant and glowing. “S’nice,” he says. “S’good.”

Bucky blinks, slow like a happy cat, and thinks about that for a minute, because he knows that it’s all the answer he’s going to get from Steve about what, exactly, he gets out of this. Steve’s as cagey as Buck about his feelings, his likes and dislikes. Luckily, Steve and Bucky have known each other long enough that if Bucky thinks about it long enough, he’ll probably be able to figure it out.

Steve likes doing things with his hands, whether that’s sketching, or punching Nazis, or (apparently) giving Bucky a backrub. He likes fixing things, whether it’s the squeaky hinge on Bucky’s front door, or that pesky Neonazi infestation you’ve got, or (apparently) a bad back. And Steve doesn’t get enough physical contact. He doesn’t, no matter how much he pretends to be like one of those statues you can’t touch because your skin oils are bad for the stone. But he gets jumpy when people touch him; goes all tense and then has to be coaxed into relaxing, but this… Steve’s doing all the touching here, isn’t he. Plenty of human contact, with none of the anxiety attached to being touched, maybe.

Bucky hides his smile in the pillow. “Okay, pal,” he mumbles. He’s sure that this is gonna be a sisyphean task. By this time tomorrow, Bucky’s back will have returned to its new normal (ie twelve-car pileup), but… 

Steven Grant Rogers has good, good hands. Bucky isn’t about to stop him from trying to fix Bucky’s bad, bad back.

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Museum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LISTEN I WASN'T REALLY PLANNING TO KEEP DOING THESE BUT THEN SHIT HAPPENED OK

#  **Steve VS Frank Lloyd Wright**

### AKA Steve hates one (1) architect

 

Retirement is pretty great.

Since coming back to New York, they’ve done the MoMA, the Met, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. They’ve done the New York Historical Society, and of course the Brooklyn Museum. They paid  _ twenty five goddamn dollars  _ to visit  _ the  _ _ Tenement _ _ Museum, _ jesusfuck.  And last week, Bucky had his mind completely blown by the Natural History Museum.

Today, they’re doing the Guggenheim.

“'Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in NYC,'” Bucky reads from his phone as they stroll towards the museum.

Steve makes a small sound, as though confused. “The architect? He’s supposed to be good, right?”

“They put his name before the artists. Must be something.”

They come around the corner and Bucky almost crashes into Steve when he stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk like a  _ fucking tourist. _

“Steve!” Bucky says, pronouncing it like  _ asshole. _

“What,” Steve says in a dread tone. “Is That.”

Bucky looks up and finds that a strangely undersized flying saucer seems to have crashed right there on Fifth Avenue, across from Central Park. A dirty flying saucer. Made of soulless concrete. With some kind of weird patchy stucco situation going on. It has water stains on it. It somehow manages to look sandwiched in, even though it takes up an entire side of the block. Between the two taller buildings it looks squat and maybe partially collapsed.

“Wow,” Bucky deadpans. “The pictures really don’t do it justice.”

“Justice?” Steve repeats, incredulous. “Justice to how  _ fucking hideous it is?” _

“Yeah, that,” Bucky agrees. 

“It looks like a stack of dirty dishes,” Steve says, horrified.

“It’s supposed to be nautilus shaped.” Bucky tilts his head and squints, trying to see how  _that's_ supposed to be. 

“It looks like a  _ toilet.” _

“Maybe it’s nicer inside?”

 

They have to shell out  _ twenty five fucking bucks _ to see the inside, which is as bad as the Tenement Museum, but at least there he could appreciate the irony of dropping three months’ rent to spend a couple hours in what was essentially their old apartment. But  _ this… _

This is something else. This is  _art,_ so Steve's already a little irritated that people have to pay that much to see it. Steve's  _art is for everyone_  principles sometimes run smack into his  _artists deserve fair compensation for their work_  ideals and then explode. But either way, expensive art museums always make him pissy.

They’re looking at an exhibition of abstract art by some Swedish lady — one of the pioneers of abstract art, even before Kandinsky, apparently. Steve’s always a little hit or miss on the abstracts, but the colors and composition on these are nice, Bucky thinks. And Steve's always there for nice ladies who deserve more recognition for their work. 

But Steve can’t quite seem to focus right now. His eye is twitching. He keeps going over to the railings to look down at the atrium. The whole space glows with natural light. Bucky thinks that’s pretty nice too, actually, but Steve’s Twitchy Jaw Muscle says otherwise. 

Bucky doubts their covers will hold up if Steve starts Captain America Ranting in full view of the museum. So he kicks Steve's ankle and says “hungry,” in a way that Steve knows to mean “there are too many people here, I would like a quieter space where I can see all the exits, please.”

 

They pay another couple months’ rent for two pitiful sandwiches and equally pitiful coffees. It’s barely noon, so there’s no one else in the cafe space, which means Steve can flail and rant all he likes.

“It’s just so! So!” And he's flailing. Flailing away.

Bucky slurps his coffee. “Is it the toilet bowl thing?”

“No!  _ Yes. _ No.” Steve flings his arms up one last time and then settles a little. “It’s supposed to be an  _ art museum.” _

“Think it is, pal.”

Steve glares. “I mean, it’s supposed to be about the  _ art.” _

Bucky slurps his coffee and gives Steve a blank stare.

Steve sighs. “If you went to a concert, and every twenty minutes they interrupted the concert to announce how amazing the sound engineering is, you’d be rightfully irritated because that’s  _ the opposite of good sound engineering. _ The point is to be able to hear the concert." He waves an arm out towards the main part of the museum, that elegant spiral and soaring space. "The point is to  _ see the art.  _ Not be distracted by the architecture.”

“Architecture is an art,” Bucky says mildly. He remembers going to the riverside to admire the Brooklyn Bridge when he was younger. He’d daydreamed about maybe  _ being _ an architect before the war sucked him in, chewed him up, and spat him out.

“Yeah, but this isn’t an  _ architecture museum _ it’s an  _ art museum.  _ Frank Lloyd Wright's got plenty of—  _Why_ are you smiling?"  Steve scowls at him.  _“_ _W_ _ hat _ is so funny?”

“You,” Bucky says, just to watch Steve get that much closer to detonation.

Steve’s expression darkens into a thunderous glare, but then Bucky hooks his ankle around Steve’s under the table and tugs a little. The glare falters.

“It’s nice,” Bucky says.

“What’s nice?” Steve is visibly still trying to hold onto his irritation.

“It’s nice to see you angry about museums instead of Nazis.”

Steve ducks his head, but he can’t fool Bucky. Steve is smiling. The apples of his cheeks are up. He’s happy despite himself. Bucky kicks his ankle under the table.  _ Don’t hide that smile, honey. _

Steve looks up, and his expression is wry. “Alright, alright.” He ducks his head again, but it’s not enough to hide that grin. “It’s nice to be angry about museums instead of Nazis.”

Retirement really is pretty great.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
